Read Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One) Online

Authors: Elizabeth Donald

Tags: #Romance

Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One) (2 page)

BOOK: Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One)
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Isabel blinked, and circled LEVEL ONE on the form. “What else can they do?”

Duane grinned. “I haven’t tried anything else,” he yelled. “I heard you can get fucked if you really want.”

Isabel grinned and glanced around, as though anyone could possibly hear them over the pounding music, still vibrating through the air. “Is it legal?”

Duane shrugged. “Everything’s legal in here!” he yelled.

She signed ISABEL NELSON at the bottom of the form, and watched him sign DUANE RUSSELL on his. Almost immediately, Fiona reappeared to take their forms. “Follow me!” she called, and Duane stood up.

Isabel stood to follow them, but her knees were suddenly a little weak. She took Duane’s hand gratefully, relishing its solid comfort in the swirling shadows of the club. Fiona led them around the dance floor to a dark, recessed door. Isabel blushed, looking around to see if anyone was watching them. She felt as though the entire club would know what she and Duane were here to do. But no one was looking at them.

Fiona unlocked the door and led them into the room. It was lit only by a candelabra on a small table against the wall. Shadows danced around the room, which was painted to look as though it had been hewn out of stone. A huge four-poster bed hung with black drapes was against the far wall, and a soft bench without a back or arms sat in the middle of the room.

The music was a little quieter here, but Isabel could still hear it pounding beyond the door.

“Your attendants will be with you shortly,” Fiona said and slipped out, closing the door behind her.

Isabel looked around, hugging her arms nervously. Duane came over to her, running his hands over her bare arms. “You’re not afraid, are you?” he asked.

“No,” she lied, forcing her arms to relax.

“Good,” he said, and stroked her arm gently, up and down, using the soft pads of his fingers instead of the tips, where a jagged nail or hardened callus can roughen the skin.

Damn, he always knows how to get me
, Isabel thought, letting the shivers relax her. It had been this way with Duane since the beginning, a naked heat that seemed to grow each time they made love instead of quenching the fire between them.

Duane unbuttoned his shirt, slipping it off his bare, muscled shoulders. She ran her hands over his chest, playing with the light mat of hair down the center. He lowered his head to kiss her, and her mouth welcomed his with heat and passion, melding into one.

Then the voice spoke. “Forgive the intrusion,” she said, and her voice was like the cool brush of silk across bare flesh, both enticing and chilling at once. Isabel looked around and saw a young woman standing beside the bed. She was small and slim, nearly frail, with skin like thinned milk and silky golden hair fanned out in cornsilk strands across the wine-dark dress she wore. Almost conservative, it was a simple scooped-neck dress with capped sleeves and a long skirt, but its deep wine color was a startling contrast to her milk-pale skin.

“Just in time,” Duane said with slight difficulty. “What’s your name?”

“Elyse,” she said, stepping forward. “He is Ryan.”

Isabel looked around, but didn’t see anyone else. For that matter, she hadn’t seen Elyse enter the room through the only doorway.

“I am Ryan,” said another voice, and suddenly Isabel saw him, standing in the shadows beside the bed. The first thing she noticed was his hair, dark and cropped close, but with a touch of wave to it that almost seemed as though it was meant to grow long and curl about his shoulders like a man in a romance movie. Then she looked at his face, into his dark eyes, and wondered how she could have noticed his hair first. His was a face that belonged in an old photograph, dark and intense, as though he were in sepia tones in an old family album. His eyes were dark in the dancing shadows. But as he moved into the light, she saw they were a deep azure blue like the sky on a clear summer day.

“Me first,” Duane said. “So she can see how it goes.”

“As you wish,” Elyse said, gesturing to the chair. Duane led her over to it and quickly slid off his slacks. He sat in the chair, his legs slightly apart. Isabel stepped close to him, a little shy with other people in the room.

“They’re not there, not really,” Duane whispered, and Isabel nodded. She drew the sleeveless top over her head and let it drop. She kept her eyes on Duane, pretending that there was no one in the room but him, and vampires didn’t exist.

Isabel stepped closer to Duane, unzipping her skirt and letting it drop to the floor with her panties. She started to slide the strap of her black lace slip off her shoulder, but Duane shook his head. “Keep it on, baby,” he said pulling her onto his lap.

Isabel straddled him in the chair, feeling the hard branch beneath the thin cotton of his shorts press against her. He rubbed it against her gently and she pressed hard against him, her hands clenching involuntarily against his shoulders. She wanted to dismiss the vampires and make love to him, but he stilled her rocking hips, holding her steady.

“Elyse,” he said, and the pale vampire slid up behind him. Her translucent-pale hands glided down over Duane’s arms and across his chest, between his body and Isabel’s. It was strange, as though Elyse were intruding on a private moment between them. But as Elyse’s hand passed close to Isabel’s bare arm, she could feel something pass over her skin, an electricity generated by the vampire as she moved over a living body.

Elyse moved around them, standing behind Isabel for a moment, and Isabel fought the urge to turn and watch the vampire. “Look at me, Duane,” Elyse purred, her voice cool as silk sheets on a rain-pounded night. Isabel watched Duane’s eyes meet Elyse’s, and there was a sudden calm, an almost beatific trance over his face.

Elyse slipped back behind Duane and lowered her mouth to his neck. She breathed lightly, and Isabel felt Duane grow harder and hotter beneath her thighs. Elyse licked along the juncture of his neck and shoulder, delicate as a cat licking cream.

Elyse smiled, revealing the sharp white points of her teeth. Her head darted downward in a swirl of cornsilk hair and she plunged her teeth into Duane’s neck. Her lips pressed down and sucked the blood welling from Duane.

Duane cried out, a hoarse moan that came from somewhere deep in his chest. Beneath her thighs, Isabel felt that hard rock throb and explode, rocking beneath her, wetting her skin, his muscles jumping and clenching against her. His hands gripped hard on Isabel’s hips, and he cried out again as Elyse sucked one more time, a long draught before licking the wound clean.

The haze cleared from Duane’s face, and he leaned forward against Isabel. “Oh God, baby,” he murmured. “I can’t wait to watch you go.”

Elyse had retreated a step, giving Duane a moment to regain his composure. Isabel’s heart was beating too fast. Ryan was crossing the room toward her.
What if it hurts?
she thought. The music was suddenly too loud again, pounding through the door into her mind, driving her heart faster and faster.

Ryan’s steps slowed as if he had heard her thoughts. He reached out a single finger, touching her lightly on the lips. “I will never harm you,” he said softly, and instinctively, Isabel believed him.

Ryan moved forward slowly now, stepping beside Duane, who was loose and satiated beneath her. Duane’s hands were stroking along her thighs and up her sides, then back down again, growing warmer beneath her thighs.

“Look at me,” Ryan said. If Elyse’s voice had been silk, Ryan’s was like warm flannel, comforting and soft. Isabel raised her gaze.

Ryan’s eyes were no longer blue, but black, as if the small black circle at the center had expanded to fill the deep azure blue of his eyes, and nothing was left but darkness. She had never seen eyes as dark as his, dark enough to see her own reflection in them, even in the dim candlelight. In his eyes, she saw herself, skin flushed with heat. It was as though the room was spinning, and only the chair and Ryan’s eyes kept her from falling down. Vertigo swirled through her head, but at her center, she was still and calm.

Elyse had returned to her place behind Duane, gliding her hands up and down his arms and chest. Ryan moved behind Isabel. Although some part of her still recoiled in fear, that calm place in her midsection remained—and her skin shivered with the fire that had been lit within her.

Ryan’s hand moved over her shoulder, gliding down the bare skin of her arm. He barely touched her, but the skin beneath his hand trembled and shuddered. It was as though he created an electrical field with his hands, stirring the nerves of her skin to exquisite life, and wherever his hands roved, her body trembled.

He stroked along one arm, then back up the inside, along tender, untouched skin. Then he stroked the other arm, and back up the inside, then both at once. He drew his hands up over her shoulders, to the smooth skin along her shoulder blades, and she couldn’t help crying out at the sensations rippling down her back.

Ryan slid one hand around her neck, where the pulse beat a rapid patter beneath the hollow of her throat. Slowly it wandered downward, over the upper swells of her breasts to the tender valley between them. The loose silken lace of her slip fell lower, and the electrical storm created by his hand moved to the right, enveloping her breast and the taut nipple, sending shooting bursts of pleasure throughout her body.

Beneath her, she felt Duane stir to life again, hardening between her legs. She opened her eyes and saw him watching her, fire burning in his eyes. She was helpless beneath the storm of sensations Ryan had created on her skin. She felt the ache between her legs, the familiar heat of unfulfilled want, swollen and hot.

Duane’s hands shifted down beneath her slip, raising up a moment, and she felt the cotton shorts slide away, leaving nothing between them. His hard, warm flesh pressed directly against her, and she cried out.

Ryan’s other hand had moved beneath her slip, filling her left breast with that electrical fire, that dance of nerves and heat that made her heart pound and her hips rotate desperately against Duane. It was as though she felt some deep-seated itch that she could not scratch; something that only hot desire could fill.

Isabel felt Ryan’s tongue, surprisingly warm and delicate, licking a long line along her shoulder, up to the place where her shoulder curved into her neck. Shivers ran down her spine and she cried out wordless sounds of pleasure.

Duane’s hands were on her hips, lifting her up, and he thrust into her, hard and strong. She settled down on him, rocking back and forth. She felt the press of two hard, sharp points at her throat, and forgot to be afraid.

Ryan’s teeth sank in, and a bright sharp pain darted across her neck, bringing a momentary lull to the pleasure. Then his mouth closed over the wound and the pain instantly vanished. The warm, moist pressure of his mouth tugged sensually at her skin, and she had the feeling of something being drawn out of her, some great velvet thread that began coiled between her legs and drew up through her stomach and chest, around her breasts and up to the place where Ryan sucked at her throat, drawing through her a velvet friction within her skin.

The roil and shudder began in her lower belly, growing and thundering through her until it filled her limbs and skin and seemed to explode from her mouth as she cried out into the air, a shattered explosion that cycled again and again, clenching and releasing as Duane exploded within her, brought by the violent eruptions within her body.

Isabel cried out again as the glorious fever ebbed. She felt Duane collapse against her chest, his head moist with sweat and his mouth open with his own breathless exhalations.

Lightly, Ryan’s tongue licked the wound on her neck, catching some small drop that lingered on her skin. That one touch set off a cascade of shudders throughout her body, down beneath her skin to the place where Duane had withdrawn from her, now spent. Duane was in some other place, his eyes closed.

A swirl of warm velvet around her, and Isabel looked up to see Ryan, gently placing a wrap around her bare shoulders. Wordlessly he faded back into the shadows, and though she watched carefully, she could not see him leave. Elyse also faded into shadows, and Isabel knew when they were alone.

Carefully she extracted herself from the bench, but her legs were wobbly and unsteady. She made her way to the bed, pulling the velvet wrap around her. Duane had sunk down onto the floor, resting against the bench in his exhaustion.

Her limbs were heavy, suffused with warmth. She wanted only to curl up and sleep. But more than that, she wished Ryan were holding her, that the room was theirs for the night and she could…

What?

Duane. She wished that
Duane
were holding her, not Ryan. Isabel blinked, and shook her head.
I must be more tired than I thought.

She lay down on the bed, curling into the velvet wrap. She watched Duane stir a little, sitting up next to the bench.

“Damn, baby,” he said softly. “I’m never going to be able to walk out of here.”

She smiled a little.

Duane stood up. “You okay?” he asked, pulling on his pants.

“Yeah,” Isabel said, still curled up in the velvet wrap.

“Shake a leg then,” Duane said. “We don’t get to stay long.”

Isabel gave up. She stood up, and reached for her clothes. Duane had never figured out that she liked to be held afterward. When it was over, it was over, according to him. To be fair, she’d never made a big deal out of it. She didn’t want to be one of those whiny you-don’t-bring-me-flowers-anymore women.

BOOK: Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One)
2.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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